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Tag Archives: digital literacy

As Facebook rolled out its Graph Search to users’ accounts, stories in the news media have been popping up about the outrageous things you can find (e.g, “married people who like prostitutes“) and–more importantly–how you can (try to) lock down your privacy settings. Gizmodo has a good overview on how to do this.

So is Facebook’s Graph Search a warm, fuzzy place to find out about other co-workers who might like bicycling and hiking, like I do? Or is it a stalker-ish search engine that uses your precious personal data and likes? Well, it’s a bit of both.

You can run. You can hide. But you still won’t be safe from Facebook’s Graph Search.

Librarians, school media specialists, and information professionals should play a role in educating their users on social media and privacy. But we all need to pay attention to what we post. Case in point, I did an off-the-wall “stereotypical” librarian search for: Single women who are librarians and like cats.

To my surprise, there were actual search results [note: I’m not saying it’s wrong to be a single librarian that likes cats. It’s just amazing to see how narrow I can make the data]:

Facebook Graph Search: single women who are librarians and like cats

I don’t know about you, but I find the search results creepy. I also wonder about some of the negative connotations people might draw from these search results. As an example, I picked my area: Green Bay, Wisconsin. Here’s a search for: People who live in Green Bay, Wisconsin and that like getting drunk.

Facebook Graph Search: people who live in Green Bay, Wisconsin and that like getting drunk

So much of the information that people think is private, is actually not. Now, I’m not part of the tin foil hat brigade, nor am I advocating for a Puritan-ization of social media–but I do think everyone needs to take a second look at the information they share, educate themselves on privacy issues, and keep vigilant in an ever changing information landscape.